Disney’s Movies Anywhere is Anywhere But Microsoft

Disney has expanded its Movies Anywhere service to include the four biggest other movie studios. Now, you can share your movies purchases from the biggest movie studios among any of the top digital movie services. And you can do so Android and iOS, Apple TV, Roku, Kindle Fire, Amazon Fire TV, and Chromecast.

“Movies Anywhere is a massive step forward for the consumer digital media experience, bringing the incredible film libraries of five studios together in a virtual one-stop movie-watching shop,” Movies Anywhere general manager Karin Gilford says. “Movies Anywhere means that consumers never have to remember where they purchased a film or which device they can watch it on, because all of their eligible movies will be centralized within their Movies Anywhere library and available across platforms through the Movies Anywhere app and website and also available at their connected digital retailers. And as Movies Anywhere continues to add more studios, retailers and platforms, the entertainment possibilities are endless.”

That last bit leaves open the possibility that Microsoft could still sign up. But there is another dark possibility to consider. Sorry.

Microsoft could surprise us. But my expectation is that this improved and more compatible Movies Anywhere service will be the impetus for Microsoft shutting down its own Movies & TV service. And app, which again only runs on Windows 10 for some reason. All it needs to do is partner with one of the compatible digital retailers—like Amazon or Apple—or with Movies Anywhere. And users will be able to move their existing libraries off of Microsoft.

So that is just speculation, of course. But it makes sense.

Returning to Movies Anywhere, this new service could solve my Apple TV problem: With its unusable remote, the Apple TV 4K has not met my expectations, but I was sort of stuck because I have so much content in Apple’s ecosystem. With Movies Anywhere, that’s no longer the case: Many—probably most—of my Apple movie purchases are now (or will soon be) available on Roku and Chromecast, and via Amazon and Google Play. So I can experiment more openly with a replacement. And will do so.

“Sharing your Video Data allows us to bring you the Movies Anywhere services, including enabling you to access, manage, browse, and watch your eligible videos across your accounts and devices, no matter where you purchase them,” a Movies Anywhere support document notes. That is exactly what I’ve been looking for. And it may be a nice out for anyone who (foolishly, sorry) actually purchased Microsoft content back in the day.

We’ll see how this evolves. But right now, this looks like a ton of good news. Movies Anywhere supports content from Disney, Fox, Sony Pictures, Universal and Warner Bros. That does leave out some heavy hitters, for sure, like MGM and Paramount. But it’s still pretty impressive.

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Lots of rumours Movies & TV is heading for the chop. It's only a matter of time I think. MS will stretch it out so the announcement isn't too close to Groove streaming shutting up shop to try and dilute it, or it will be announced as a sub-item in another corporate no-name blog posting. I can imagine there's very, very few paying subscribers. Netflix and Amazon have the market sewn up. It will be one more step away from the consumer.

No one should buy a movie. They get lost into the ether. Movies should be regarded as disposable. There are eight versions of Blade Runner and many versions of Star Wars. They are cut and recut. Then remade and always worse than the original, which didn’t hold up to time, which is why they are remade, but they want to get that old magic to new audiences who resist. Save your money. I have more channels or services than ever and nothing to watch.

Disney movies on Windows devices is really pretty cool. But there are some free resources like Freeflix HQ which lets you watch all latest movies and TV shows for free right from your Android, iOS and Windows devices for free. You can try it out.

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I have a lot of movies in Vudu courtesy of the disc-to-digital program they have.

However I really like the Google Family Group feature (which Vudu doesn't have) that allows you to add up to 5 other people and share movies with everyone in the group. This new MoviesAnywhere system has synced most of my Vudu movies over to Google Play and also made them shareable with the Family Group.

Pretty nice and it makes digital download movie purchases much closer to the appeal of Blu-ray by cutting out some of the sharing restrictions.

Microsoft should just kill the Movies section in the Store. They really just have no business in the content world. Apple's stronghold and brainwashing of the media industry (see: planet of the apps) is something MS should not touch with a 10-foot pole.

I'll stick with Ultraviolet and Vudu, thanks. I've never purchased movies from Microsoft. Only music. We typically buy the actual blueray disks at our local Walmart and then register the digital copies with Vudu, which is accessible everywhere.

In reply to Rob_Wade: You may want to use Movies Anywhere going forward, as I take it, UltraViolet is on its way out the door, and the new Digital Locker that Disney created, is the future, especially when nearly all the studios are on board, and the 2 that didn't sign into this new service, gave their blessing and may end up being on board soon. I myself was using a mixture of iTunes.com and Vudu, and to a lesser degree, Google Play and Movies and TV from Microsoft. Movies Anywhere just simplified my movie collection and digital movie purchase experience.

Well the upside now is you can use MoviesAnywhere to sync your Vudu movies to Google Play Movies and use the Family Sharing system there to let up to 5 family members view those movies directly without needing your Vudu login.

Again UWP / Win 10 exclusivity is Microsoft Achilles. Personally i use Roku only for Netflix and local Plex. I am glad movies anywhere is going to be on Roku and iOS since i switched to iPhone 8 Plus as well. My next goal is to get rid of Surface Pro 3 running Windows 10 and get Mac Air. Skype Station is already running on Linux. Two remaining desktop PCs are running Windows 7. One is going to be sold and replaced with Mac Book Pro and the high end PC stays on Windows 7 until 2020 and then we will see. Once upon time household was running all windows based devices and will end up running just one copy of Windows 7. Says enough about Microsoft, and i can guarantee you that many other people follow same or similar path.

I would gladly get rid of Office 365 bullshit since i use Libre Office, but some other members of family need it. For $9.99 i find iCloud much better solution which gives me 2tb of space and better integration with iOS/Mac OS devices.

The Windows 10 store is an industry joke and pretty much self parody at this point. It barely exists. And it alienates more than half of all windows users by being limited to 10, while users actually on 10 mostly ignore it. And that's why publishers do.

It should have instead begun as the go-to repository for Win32 programs and been available on Windows 7 and 8.1 too, then added the UWP garbage slowly. MS tried doing it back asswards.

The thing is, the store also doubles as a digital locker for the content that people from there, so it's not as easy as just backporting it to Windows 7. Also, backporting the Store to Windows 7 would just make Windows 7 the same thing as what people like you complain about Windows 10.

I should also point out that Microsoft offered a free upgrade from Windows 7 to 10 but you obviously didn't upgrade. If you wanted the store, you would have upgraded. So why are you asking for the store on 7 despite you clearly not being interested in it?

Back porting Store to Windows 7 would make store successful. You are missing out the point. There is more than just to Store. Applications sold in Store on Windows 7 would come with executable and end user would have full control over it.

In reply to karma77police: Obviously you don't know anything. back porting the store to Windows 7 doesn't make the store successful. It requires features of Windows 10 that simply not part of Windows 7 are are too complicated to also backport or impossible. Also the store requires content to people want to become successful.

Windows 10 is already successful and preparing to top Windows 7 in Market share possibly by end of this year. Also the Windows store was still in it infant stages when it first launched in Windows 8/8.1 and again in Windows 10, Since the Anniversary update and the Creator's Updates, the store has been improved along with the rest of the OS. There are AAA Game Titles and Win32 apps being added, without dealing with all the clutter and issues that come with regular Win32 apps. Hell, even Linux Distros are being added for the Linux Subsystem built into Windows 10. I like the apps in the app store due to their clean installs and easy removal. I still use regular Win32 apps like Steam, but the Windows App store isn't as bad and depending on the app, I will get it from the store. Plus the Digital Xbox Anywhere titles are superb, as I make one purchase and have a game that I can play on either PC or Xbox.

With that being said, Windows 7 was great for it's time, but Windows 10 has surpassed it in Gaming, features, and performance. It is time to let Windows 7 pass by and stop giving the always me sob stories.

The current windows store has no good content but UWP garbage. Steam, Origin, UPlay are all successful stores available on Windows 7. How do you explain that? You are really clueless. Windows 10 failed for all reasons it was created for and as far as Market Share goes, Windows 10 is far below Windows 7 so keep dreaming about end of year. On overall Windows and Non Windows Market, Windows 10 sits on 27% and Windows 7 on 47%. Again Windows Store is a failure and for Linux, yes i like Linux but i will install clean install Linux and not Linux Subsystem bullshit. Most other Linux people will agree with me. Windows 10 still didn't surpassed Windows 7 in performance and in gaming and as far as features goes, yes have some useful one and lot of junk too. How do i know that Windows 10 is not running games faster than Windows 7? Because i tested on state of art machine Skylake-X 18/36, SLI 1080 ti with 32Gb of DDR4. There is no better hardware than that, right now and the result show equal performance between two in DX9/10/11 games, some incompatibilities Windows 10 has with older titles and absolute junk performance with DX12. So there you have it.

Yes Windows 7 will die out eventually, but at the same time Windows 10 won't have bright future before MS kills it.

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The beauty of Movies Anywhere is that you buy from one retailer and the movie is available in your other connected accounts. So Amazon Video and Vudu, both of which have Xbox apps, will allow you to watch.

You know what I want? One service with all of the movies I have ever purchased digitally or unlocked via Ultraviolet. As it is now, I have to use VUDU for my Ultraviolet movies. A few yeara ago, AMazon had a great sale and I bought a bunch of movies with them. Now I've been buying movies through iTunes with the Movie of the Day app, which gets you a different movie every day for only $5.99.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if I didn't have to have an Apple TV just to watch my iTunes movies?

I know it will never happen because Apple is is Apple, but I'd love to have just one place to go for my movies.

If you link to VUDU for both Ultraviolet and Movies Anywhere, it will sync everything except for Paramount and Lionsgate titles. I connected to VUDU this morning and I now see all of my Ultraviolet titles from Warner, Sony, Universal, and Fox in my Google, iTunes, and Amazon accounts.

I have a hunch it won't be too long before Paramount and Lionsgate join the program.

This is great news. I have a few movies on Google Play, Amazon, and iTunes with the vast majority on Vudu. After adding these retailers to the new account, most of my Vudu library is now available across all of the services. (Including Star Wars, which was excluded from Disney Movies Anywhere because of 20th Century Fox).

This may be an academic distinction, but this is movies. What about TV? Does Movies & TV offer more than Netflix or Hulu? Looks like there'll be a much better option for movies. If there's also better options for TV, then what's the point?

Also, standard question: outside the US what's available in the way of TV on Movies & TV? Kojak reruns like used to be shown in Warsaw Pact countries before the Berlin Wall came down? Local TV?

So something else odd happened when DMA moved to MA, Verizon was also dropped as a partner, where they were a DMA partner. Amazon is new in this mix. The services that seemed to have been consistent are Vudu, Google and Apple. Things that make you go hmmm.

I've been a very heavy users of our M&TV app over the past 3+ years. Because of where I work, I've been able to interact directly with those in the M&TV team who are responsible for TV content and content ingestion. I've seen a recurring pattern of TV episodes first being available on iTunes - sometimes days or more before being available on M&TV. I can't say for sure that this is a deliberate ploy of the content providers but it happened enough to finally push me over to replacing my Surface 3 as a consumption device and replacing it with an iPhone 7+ and now buying my TV content from Apple. The timely availability of TV episodes (usually within 12-18 hours of air date), the wider selection of content and the extras that come with the Apple season pass, make the switch a no-brainer. I'm hopeful that when iTunes comes to W10 as a UWP app, I can once again start using my Surface for TV entertainment. However, the M&TV app is dead to me. (Just my personal $.02 and not that of my employer.)

I thought Wal-Mart buying VUDU was going to be a disaster, but disc-to-digital was one of the benefits. It's a great way to not only get the movie digitally, but upgrade to HD if available for a very reasonable $5.

It seems never ending at the moment, doesn't it? I would have simply reused that "Kick me" graphic again ;).

I have purchased a ton of video content through Microsoft over the years (I stopped a while back). For good reasons, I promise! Or good reasons at the time. What made sense then doesn't make sense now.

Firstly, for context (and so I don't punch myself in the face), my excuse/reasoning for having so many movies and shows in Microsoft's ecosystem. Firstly, the UWP app is very good (as was the Windows 8 version before it), allowing me to download my movies, and television shows, for offline use which was, and still is, an advantage of the service as somebody who travels a lot for work (likewise, the battery life of the Movies and TV app is excellent for travel). Secondly was the living room play of the Xbox 360. I watched most of my content on a large HD TV and so the Xbox was a big consideration as to how I got my video content. At the time, the apps we have today on Xbox One were not available here in the UK or were poor or more "unstable" (services such as Tesco Video, Blinkbox, anyone?). Thirdly, it's only two years ago that my ISP here in the UK has upgraded us to "fibre" and I get a speed at which I can happily stream HD content. Before then, I would use the Xbox 360 to download movies, in HD, to the Xbox's hard drive to avoid the unbearable start/stop buffering that can ruin a good movie. And finally, I was a Windows Phone user living in a market where Windows Phone actually did okayish. And I was in, what I thought, was an ecosystem of phones, computers, consoles, and tablets. But that was then.

Times have changed, and today I'm able to stream HD movies and 4K movies to my (now) 4K TV, reliably, and without issues. Also, Amazon's video app on the Xbox One is pretty excellent now, and works across many of my devices. I've stopped buying my movies through Microsoft now and have switched to Amazon for the most part (or only renting through Microsoft). So the only advantage of Microsoft's Movies and TV service (or Films and TV as it is known in the UK) is the ability to play the movies, offline, across my Windows 10 devices.

None of the movie services in the UK offer a UWP app, or the ability to download movies for offline play on Windows 10. But, at this point, I'd gladly forfeit any of the convenience that affords me for a service that I can trust to last. After all, Microsoft has never brought their Movies and TV app to Android or iOS, so the cross-platform advantage I felt when I was "all in" on Windows Phone, and it looked like Windows Phone might be a viable platform, no longer applies.

After the death of Groove, the end of Microsoft Movies and TV feels inevitable. And I wondered about the future of the service when Disney pulled its support for Disney Movies Anywhere a short while back (not that I could use the service anyway, being in the UK). At this point, having been burnt enough times, I'm almost *willing* Microsoft to partner with a provider who is serious about entertainment, and allow me to migrate my content across. And with this Movies Anywhere service, at least I can then stop trying to remember what content is where...

It's another case of Microsoft having a viable service or platform and not following through. Despite the failings of the Zune device (which never launched over here), they were left with a viable entertainment service. At the time, they were in the position of being one of the few companies that *could* compete with Apple who was dominating all of this stuff at the time. Same as the Band, same as Groove, same as...

Anyway, Kick me... It's another product that Microsoft came out shouting and screaming about, and then squandered the chances of it ever being a success. I had wished they'd get serious about this stuff, but now I'm just hoping they partner with somebody who is.

I'm almost *willing* Microsoft to partner with a provider who is serious about entertainment, and allow me to migrate my content across.

My money would be on Amazon. Though I don't see it happening until Microsoft can stomach another write off (as I'm guessing they would technically have to rebuy everyone's videos on Amazon, even if Amazon doesn't take their cut).

I have to disagree with you on this one Paul. And it's for the fact that you're approaching this with a very U.S.-Centric view. Outside of the U.S. there aren't as many other Movie and TV digital content services. Microsoft's Movies and TV app on both Windows 10 and especially Xbox is the only place for some countries that provide this service. Groove was a different exception as the competition is available just about everywhere. But Amazon and Roku are distinctly U.S. only. And Apple products outside the US are even more expensive and less used. I can't see Microsoft's Movie's and TV service going anywhere anytime soon.

Also, the Disney Anywhere service has been U.S. Only as far as I can recall, and this expanded version is still U.S. only. So please don't be surprised if Movies and TV is around for years to come.

I really hope Microsoft does partner with someone else, and shuts down their Movies & TV service. I naively bought a bunch of content from them when I was in my Microsoft-fanboy phase, and would love to get that content out of there.

This basically solves the DRM issue with movies, as long as enough studios and services sign up. I'd be thrilled if this came for TV shows as well. Fingers crossed!

What I find even more interesting is Netflix. When Disney ends it's relationship with Netflix and starts its own streaming service are these 5 studios along for the ride? Expanding the available library beyond Disney properties? That would almost certainly kill Netflix.

These studios are down for whatever makes them more money. I doubt they would jump ship from Netflix immediately but if Disney proves they are better off financially getting the whole pie for a smaller user base compared to a slice of the largest pie out there then I expect the others to try a similar stand-alone approach (or do like TV did and combine to make a Hulu-like service jointly owned by studios).

More and more, Netflix is primarily using their original content as their selling point. That is helping to reduce their dependency on the studios and should help to protect them going forward. Basically, they are following the same approach that HBO took. At one time, HBO was primarily the best way to watch unedited, commercial free movies at home. As this attraction was blunted by the combination of the VCR and the arrival of Showtime and the advent of exclusivity deals, HBO started to very aggressively produce original content. While HBO still offers theatrical movies, most people see that as a sideline and not their main business now.